Thread: House To Investigate Itself

August 4, 2007

House To Investigate Itself (Update: Replay Confirms Cheating)

Faced with a clear example of vote fraud, the House has agreed to investigate .. itself. The day after Democratic leadership in the House attempted to nullify a completed floor vote, the Majority Leader had to issue an apology and agree to an extraordinary bipartisan panel to probe the actions of House leadership:

The House last night unanimously agreed to create a special select committee, with subpoena powers, to investigate Republican allegations that Democratic leaders had stolen a victory from the House GOP on a parliamentary vote late Thursday night.

The move capped a remarkable day that started with Republicans marching out of the House in protest near midnight Thursday, was punctuated by partisan bickering, and ended with Democratic hopes for a final legislative rush fading. Even a temporary blackout of the House chamber's vote tally board led to suspicions and accusations of skullduggery.

While Democratic leaders hoped to leave for their August recess on a wave of legislative successes, the House instead slowed to an acrimonious crawl that threatened to stretch the legislative session into next week.

The agreement to form a special committee was extraordinary. Such powerful investigative committees are usually reserved for issues such as the Watergate scandal and the funneling of profits from Iranian arms sales to the Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s.

"I don't know when something like this has happened before," said House deputy historian Fred W. Beuttler. He called the decision "incredible."

It started when Democrats gaveled a vote to a close on a bill that would have prevented federal aid going to illegal immigrants. The Democrats insisted that the vote had been a tie, 214-214, but C-SPAN showed the vote as 215-213 for the Republicans. The Democrats tried to keep the vote from the record, and then belatedly reported it as a 216-212 loss for the GOP.

Republicans erupted in outrage. Democrats had earlier in this session changed the previous rules allowing votes to remain open at the discretion of the president of the session, a practice they called unfair while in the minority. Instead, Republicans charged, they simply disregarded the result of a vote and replaced it with their own desires -- a highly dangerous precedent that creates dictatorial rule by the majority leadership. If allowed to stand, the incident would eliminate any requirement to actually vote at all in the House.

The panel will consist of three Republicans and three Democrats. They have a deadline for an interim report of September 30th of this year, with the final report due a year later -- just before the next elections. In the meantime, the GOP wants the vote to return to its gavelled result. If they do not get that, the Republicans will likely embark on a series of parliamentary manuevers that will keep House leadership from accomplishing any of their top agenda items. After all, the Republicans have nothing to lose as long as Nancy Pelosi disregards the results of legitimate votes and rules by decree instead.

http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/

UPDATE: Congressional Quarterly has already accomplished most of the duties of the panel:

The floor confusion arose when, with the tally tied at 214-214, two politically vulnerable Democrats, Nick Lampson of Texas and Harry E. Mitchell of Arizona, went to the well of the chamber to switch their votes to “no.â€

It was all a big play and staged. It was a Chinese fire drill to fool the public and walk away unscathed. They all should be given the boot.